[File this under "why the f*ck did you waste your time on this?".]

File this under "why the f*ck did you waste your time on this?".

A few years ago I got caught up in fooling around with alittle instant messaging device called the Zipit Z2 from a company called Zipit Wireless.  These devices were supposed to free up your family computer from a messaging junky, and prevent the need for a child to have a cell phone.  With it, you can instant message, listen to music ... and that was about it.  The device ran Linux natively, and the developers were quite open to 'hacking'.

While most folks went the direction of running a full Debian OS on the device, I went the route of trying to build things that would run on the native kernel (2.6).  So you could pop in your 'experimental SD card' and run stuff from a terminal that was using the native 2.6 kernel.  But then you could also pop out your SD card and reboot and your Zipit would run the commercial software that it shipped with.  Whereas if you installed your own OS, you were replacing the commercial software.

Fast forward five years or so and the commercial software is now worthless, because Zipit dropped the while instant messaging for kids business.  Anyway - I have been wanting to do something interesting lately to combine my love for Bitcoin mining with my love for stupid and outdated technology, and then I remembered I have a Zipit lying in a drawer at home.

Many wasted hours later, I am successfully mining on my Zipit Z2.

When I say 'successfully', I mean that I am CPU mining with a 312Mhz ARM processor at about 52Kh/s.  I am attempting to mine Zetacoins through a pool, which is a little bit impossible.  This thing is too damned slow to really participate, but it does *try* (adorable!!).

I was thinking that while this is obviously not at all useful, it could be if you were attaching something to it.  Such as, an array of ASIC Block Erupters.  The trick there is that the Zipit Z2 does not have any USB ports.  Not to say that you can't add USB, but it's a pain in the ass.  You have to do a bit of kernel hacking, buy a strange little port that fits the back, and solder together your own cable.  This may be a bit more work than it's worth considering the cost of a small PC or a Raspberry Pi that is much faster and has USB ports.  Still, you can now buy these devices on eBay for around $20 shipped.  Also - they have their own little clickety keyboard and built in color display!

I had to share this with somebody, and maybe take some pictures to post.

In the meantime, if anyone has a Zipit Z2, you can give this a shot - and here is how:
1) Read up on my IZ2S release here: http://rayhaque.blogspot.com/2009/12/about-improved-z2-shell-iz2s.html
2) Download my IZ2S shell from here: www.oddree.com/zipit/Z2S-v205-BETA.zip
3) Download cgminer 2.9.7 for the Zipit Z2 from here: http://oddree.com/zipit/cgminer-z2.tgz

I can go into more details about how I built it using Scratchbox, etc.  But I doubt anyone cares.  Discuss.  :-)

Other interesting links:

• My old buddy Russell Davis provided a lot of the hacked up code that made up IZ2S.  He went on to make a better version of my "BETA 5" release.  You can find that here: http://russelldavis.org/2010/10/21/proper-release-of-iz2s-enhanced/
  
• Some info on USB working on the Zipit (this requires U-booting your Zipit - which I have not done!): http://www.mozzwald.com/node/60
• An old hack-a-day writeup with some proof of concept of USB on the Zipit: http://hackaday.com/2010/09/18/usb-host-comes-to-zipit/
  

Happy Mining,
-ODDREE

Next week - Mining Bitcoin on the V-Tech V-Smile!

Hello all, I am pool mining Zetacoin (alt coin, but still SHA256 based) at the moment, but my results have been the same with mining for BTC with BitMinter.  It seems that my video card that mines at 75Kh/s mines WAY MORE efficiently than three ASIC block erupters with a combined hashing power of 1.1Gh/s.  At first I thought that this might be the hardware, or the version of cgminer I was running, etc.  But I have moved these around to different hardware and the result is the same.  I have also gone between cgminer and bfgminer.  No difference.

Here is a screenshot.  Note the speed - and the number of accepted shares.  Am I missing something?  Perhaps I am not reading the stats correctly.  Or is there something I need to tweak to make my erupters mine better?